Beyond the noise: Why 3% is the magic number
Ben Abbott is founder of Utrinque Yachts.
He sat with his men cleaning their weapons in the dusty compound at Kandahar Airport when a smoking rocket arced out of the sky towards them. They looked up and stiffened, but no one flinched. They were used to the Taliban letting off old Soviet rockets at random.
“There’s this ancient rocket, smoke trailing behind it, drifting towards us so slowly you almost had time to finish your tea,” says Ben Abbott, founder of Utrinque Yachts.
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The rocket landed in the Australian sector behind them, igniting a stack of gas canisters and sending stones flying everywhere, smashing windows. The Aussies thought they were taking incoming fire and scrambled for their weapons. When the troops realised it was just stones, everyone grinned. Nobody was hurt.
“It’s one of those moments that’s properly absurd looking back; an ancient, half-broken Soviet rocket somehow finding the one thing that would make it dramatically worse,” says Abbott.
“What stuck with me wasn’t the fear, it was watching it coming and realising panic wasn’t going to change anything. You just had to read what was actually happening and deal with it calmly.”
‘My rifle, my kit, my orders’
It is this philosophy that Abbott is bringing to his new venture as a superyacht broker.
“You can usually see the real problem coming from some way off, the skill is staying level while it plays out, not reacting to the noise around it,” he adds.
His yachting thought leadership column is called The 3% Market, based on this idea that amid all the data, information and opinions, only a tiny amount is relevant to your particular task.
“That’s all you have to worry about,” he says. “My rifle, my kit, myself, my orders. Everything else is just noise.”
Researching the yacht business and building contacts, Abbott realised he would need a distinct strategy to stand out. As a lad he remembers watching the working ships enter Preston harbour from his grandfather’s fruit market in the docks. This, his military mindset and his base in Edinburgh, Scotland steered him towards true explorer yachts and conversions from donor vessels.
“My thought pattern is that I have something I can bring to this,” he says. “I’m not going to try to jump into a massive, overfed pond like Monaco. I needed to find something that suits me, suits my personality. Explorer yachts just kept pulling me.”
Abbott spent 22 years in the British Army and completed tours of duty in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo. At one point he led a team of up to 35 soldiers helping train elite forces to get “extremely fit”.
The 2008 financial crash sparked an interest in the economy and after he left the army he read for a degree in economics and mathematical science. His epiphany came while on holiday in Mallorca, chatting to the skipper of his small charter sailing yacht while gazing at a nearby 50m explorer.
“I thought this is something I could do,” he says. “I’m good with people, my military background enables me to think outside the box and attention to detail is what I thrive on.”
Proprietary data
Abbott’s entry into a crowded market comes at a time when several new boutique brokerages have launched out of bigger corporate players, such as Matterhorn and The Wayve.
As part of his research, Abbott recalls watching a video from the Superyacht Investor London conference where Jamie Edmiston delivers the line about how any “idiot” with a phone and a business card can be a yacht broker.
“I had to laugh,” says Abbott. “But once I worked out what my strategy was going to be, I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to be that person. I’m in it for the long game. I would rather walk away and say that I failed, than become something I don’t want to be.”
Abbott believes his financial acumen and analytical prowess give him an edge in data interpretation.
“I’m building a propriety data set that I believe no other broker has, particularly surrounding the 50m-plus explorer yacht space,” he says.
“In a normal market, I would work top down, starting from the bigger picture, but in a vessel, I think it’s important to work from the bottom up, and look at what you’ve got in the hull, the classification, the history, the servicing, is it reliable, does it tick all the boxes for the client?”
‘It’s always a what-if scenario’
His recent articles have discussed the “Explorer Premium”, private credit and why paying attention to Chinese steel exports matters. His writing is generating connections and conversations, particularly from America, he says.
“I know that doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but it reinforces the fact that what I’m doing is OK,” he adds.
So far, he insists he has met no negativity from the industry.
“In general, everybody has been amazing,” he says. “I know it can be guarded and I absolutely understand that. But I believe the whole industry is built on relationships, and it’s about giving more than you’re taking. I’m prepared to wait. I’m prepared to show people I’m genuine. My time will come.
Preparing and planning for a time when he is in front of a potential yacht client is crucial and plays to the military ethos, says Abbott.
“You don’t just send a patrol out in Afghanistan on the back of a fag packet,” he says. “You have to plan everything. That’s just the way I approach life. It’s always a ‘what if?’ scenario, trying to think five steps ahead. If road A is blocked, it is working out how you get around. It’s having the patience and the tenacity to do it, believing in yourself and being honest, with yourself as well.”
He insists teamwork, where no one will let the others down, is everything.
“I am adamant I’m not going to survive unless I get other brokers on side. I don’t think you can be a lone wolf in this environment,” he says.
“It’s not going to be easy. I’m under no illusions here. But one thing I will do is I will probably outwork anybody. That comes from elite forces where you just keep going and going, you’re on your feet for 24, 48 hours without sleep.”
At that point, you really do need to ignore the noise.
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